


Try to Be Wronger

by redroslin



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fix-It, Friendship, Ice Queen Roslin (I Love Her So), Idiots in Love, Kara Gives the Best Hugs, Kara is the Best, Lee Needs a Hug, No Really Kara Thrace Kicks Ass and Takes Names, Older Woman/Younger Man, Pining, Soulmate - Body Swap Trope, Soulmates, canon-typical angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 18:22:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6294871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redroslin/pseuds/redroslin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night a year, for a minute or less, soul mates wake up in each other's bodies. Laura Roslin didn't believe in soul mates. Lee Adama always knew he had one. (Then the world ended.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Fate's Twisted Games](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4750886) by [shieldivarius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/shieldivarius). 



Laura never imagined he might have survived. Really hadn't thought of him at all since the attacks.

It wasn't as if she didn't have other things on her mind. Her cancer. Richard's death. The survival of the human race. More important things than some fantasy man who probably didn't exist and who, if he did, was invariably not nearly so perfect for her as he was supposed to be.

For heaven's sake. Soul mates. Patently absurd. If she was going to be let down by life anyway, it was wiser not to expect too much.

In any case, he was probably dead. Everyone else she had ever loved certainly was.

 

* * *

 

She was 21 the first time she woke in the middle of the night in a stranger's body. She felt sluggish and weak. She tried to move but found she could barely turn her head. Everything felt off, felt wrong, displaced. Even her eyes didn't seem to focus right, though the dim light filtering in from another room might account for that. All she could make out clearly was a blue wall with slats, and the thin curve of the moon that peered through a window.

Then Laura was back in her own body, shaking with reaction. She slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom. Downed a glass of cold water. Stared out the window at the same slim crescent of moon. Stared at herself in the mirror. Who the hell was she? What the hell had that been?

By morning, she had persuaded herself that the entire experience had been a bad dream. A year later, she managed to convince herself of it again.

 

* * *

 

For a long time, Laura had believed that soul mates were a myth. It made a nice bedtime story for the credulous; a convenient excuse for strange coincidences. But it was supposed to be rare for soul mates to find each other. Almost impossible it should be otherwise, considering the fifty billion people of the Twelve Colonies. Which begged the question: What was the difference between being immensely mathematically unlikely and being a fantasy?

Laura lived in a world of practical things and pragmatic decisions. When she needed cubits in high school to pay for a ski trip to Virgon with friends, she got a job as a waitress. When she graduated from public school, she chose a teacher's college that fast-tracked its students into the workforce. When she turned 19 and her uncle offered to buy her a car (mere weeks before his own car would go over a cliff in a Geminese earthquake, and didn't that make her feel strange about driving around in his parting gift to her for the next eight years), she picked a tiny sedan that made good gas mileage. Romance never factored into her decisions and rarely factored into her life. And that was _before_ the fall.

After her diagnosis, after the attacks, after most of humanity lay dead on twelve dead worlds--well, what little romance there had been in Laura's soul must have died with them. What was left should have been stone.

 

* * *

 

Laura was 25 when she realized that her uncomfortable out-of-body experiences were happening on the same night every year.

In the wee hours of Maius 14th, she woke up shivering in her own body, in her own twin bed in her own first tiny apartment, and wished Micah were there. Even though she couldn't stand how he fell asleep on top of her and was, frankly, ambivalent about him most of the time. Even so. She wanted a warm body to hold and be held against--wanted someone there to remind her that she was herself.

She was Laura Roslin. She was not some fragile, broken body with an aching head and a cast on her left arm. She was not dwarfed by her own bed. She was not so alone.

Why did she keep having these dreams? The first had been ages ago, and she could swear she'd had about one a year since then, each dream just different enough from the one before to make them feel real. The last time she dreamt this... hadn't it been just before Ryan and Shelley's wedding last Iunius?

She glanced at the clock. It was coming up on 4 am. She wasn't going to be getting any more sleep tonight.

Digging through old calendars and her slightly decrepit electronic organizer, she found enough information to pin down the dates of three of the dreams. Each one had been on this same night, the 14th of Maius, each a year or two apart. If she were the betting type, and she sometimes was, Laura was willing to put down cubits on the odds that the other two dreams had happened on Maius 14th, as well.

This was one of those soul mate myths, wasn't it? Switching bodies in the dead of night once a year to help matched souls learn enough to find each other. Ye Gods. As if she needed a soul mate she might never find to complicate her life. As if she even believed in that nonsense. She supposed she would have to start believing in the whole stupid thing now.

Worse, if she was seeing through her soul mate's eyes and living in his (her?) body for those brief moments every year when she woke someplace strange, then why was it so _uncomfortable_? Was it supposed to be this awful, or was something wrong?

She shied away from the thought. She didn't want to consider what it might mean that her soul mate's body felt so strange (and horrible, really _horrible_ , though she didn't want to think that word either)--any more than she wanted to give herself permission to think about what it would be like to love someone and be loved right down to your soul.

Love like that was meant to stay in fairy tales.

Instead she pulled up the calendar app on her organizer and added a vague note to next Maius 14th. She'd have to remember to book the 15th off work next year. And the year after that. For as long as it took.

And maybe she'd get good and drunk the night before and sleep through the entire thing.

 

* * *

 

She didn't mean to do exactly that, but then she hadn't meant to teach her sister how to swim by nearly drowning her in Blackwater Creek when she was five, either.

Laura requested Maius 15th off from teaching ("for a family commitment") and then didn't know what to do with herself. On the evening of the 14th, she sat in her living room with a book and a glass of wine... and then stared at the clock for a while, willing the hands to move, reading the same paragraph for a fourth time before finally giving up and glancing at the liquor cabinet. Well, why not?

She woke the next morning with a wicked hangover to discover a number of bottles displaced around the room, the levels of their contents rather lower than she recalled. On the upside, she hadn't dreamed herself into anyone else's bedroom. Or if she had, she couldn't remember the event, and that was good enough for her.

It became an annual tradition. Take the 15th off from work, sit up late drinking on the 14th, pass out through the body swap soul mate thing and pretend she wasn't shaken up by the mere thought of it.

She virtually stopped drinking on any other day of the year. An occasional glass of wine, maybe, if the occasion called for it. She didn't feel like letting booze be a crutch... except when she needed one.

And then, one year, she forgot.

 _Forgot_ might be a slight exaggeration. She had noticed the date earlier in the week and simply decided to do nothing about it. Maybe the dreams had been just that--dreams. It had been years now. The gods only knew, she was 44 years old. Maybe she had imagined it all when she was younger and lonelier and more foolish.

She woke in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar bed, in a room she didn't know, and in a body that wasn't hers. This time it felt strange but not... not horrible. Not at all the way it had before. This body felt amazing, actually. She turned her head and discovered she could move freely when she found herself staring at a wall covered in C-Bucs posters and other pyramid paraphernalia.

She flicked back the sheets, intending to get up and try to get a sense of the room, and got distracted by abs.

Whoa. The boy had a serious six pack. Nicely muscled arms, too, now that she was looking. And--did she dare?

She pushed the sheet back. Everything below the abs was beautiful and sizeable and manly, too. And he slept naked. And wasn't this one of the most surreal experiences of her life?

Then she was back in her own body, in her own bed, and she wanted to bang her head against the wall in frustration because, shit, she was one of those creepy people who checked out their soul mate's bits instead of looking for useful information that might help her find him. What an idiotic and invasive and downright stupid thing to do.

Not that he mightn't have done the exact same thing to her, and wouldn't that serve her right.

She could only hope he liked what he'd seen.

 

* * *

 

The last time she dreamed her way into his body had been nearly a year before the world ended. She'd let herself 'forget' to plan for the 14th again. She'd gone out to dinner with colleagues, in fact, and stumbled home late. Toed off her pumps, washed her face. Watered the plants in the kitchen and went to bed.

She woke in a dark, enclosed space and knew she must be seeing through her soul mate's eyes. But where the claustrophobic hell was she?

She reached out to her right and bashed her elbow against the wall--his elbow, that is. She hoped he wouldn't have bruises the next day. Stretching more carefully to her left, her arm caught on something and her fingers met thick, heavy fabric. A blackout curtain? Around his bed? She tugged at it a few times and was rewarded with a gap near her feet that let in enough light to see.

He looked as good as he had a year ago, if not better. She wanted to lick his washboard abs, but given the physical impossibility of that from where she was currently situated, she settled for running a finger across the planes of his chest and down to his left hipbone. His hands were long-fingered with tidy nails, little pale crescents visible at their bases even in the dim light.

She wondered what he did with his hands. Did he play a musical instrument? Build things? Did he drive to work every day? Did he comfort people with those hands?

Silly to speculate, when she could be looking around his room. Last year, she'd found herself in the C-Bucs-bedecked bedroom for a second time and had just noticed a set of framed photos on the dresser before she was tugged back home. This time around, she'd do better.

The little she could make out through the crack in the blackout curtain was brightly lit and sterile. Pulling herself up on his elbows, she tugged the curtain back until she could see an open space scattered with functional metal furniture. The few odds and ends of clothing lying around didn't even begin to soften the wall of metal lockers that faced her across the long room.

The quiet mumble of conversation she'd been hearing in the background this whole time suddenly stopped.

"Elle Tee?" a woman asked, just out of her line of sight. "Everything okay?"

"Don't mind me," she managed to reply, a stranger's masculine voice rumbling in her ears.

She felt dizzy for a moment--and then she was standing in her own bedroom in the dark, halfway between the bed and the dresser, one hand outstretched toward the mirror. The _rotating_ mirror that was pointing in the wrong direction because she had misaligned it when she cleaned it last week and hadn't yet bothered to straighten it out.

From which she inferred that he had been on his way to look at her face, but hadn't made it before they got pulled back into their respective bodies. Leaving her waiting another year before either of them would be able to find out anything useful.

She had learned something new tonight, though.

 _"LT? Is everything okay?"_ Her soul mate of the elegant hands and rock hard abs was a military man.

 

* * *

 

Ten months later, the Cylons invaded.

 

* * *

 

She'd never wanted a soul mate to begin with.

 

* * *

 

"Young Lady," Galactica's doctor said in a tone that brooked no argument, "your Caprican doctor was either a charlatan or an idiot."

She argued anyway. "Excuse me?"

Doctor Cottle met her gaze and all but snarled, "You don't have cancer."

"I don't?"

"Whoever told you that you have cancer was either trying to swindle you, or they swapped their client list. There's no tumor here."

She froze for a moment. Then said, cooly, "I saw the foremost oncologist in Caprica City. You mean to say--"

"Yes, I do mean to say. Now get out of my sickbay and stop taking my time away from patients who actually need medical attention."

Stunned speechless, she let him grumble his way out the curtained door without another word.

Could it be true? It was remotely possible that Doctor Arrack had misread her results back on Caprica, or that her file had been mixed up in some clerical error, or--the gods only knew. It was equally possible that Cottle, despite a manner that proclaimed him fully capable of birthing a baby with one hand while performing open-heart surgery with the other, had made some kind of mistake.

It was possible. But it seemed improbable as hell. Frankly, the old saw about soul mates healing each other when they first touch seemed more likely.

No.

It couldn't be.

How many people had she met since her doctor's appointment on the morning of Galactica's retirement ceremony?

No, scratch that. How many since her battery of tests were taken the preceding week? How many people had she shaken hands with in the past two devastating weeks alone?

 _Whoever you are_ , she thought, _you may have saved my life. But for what?_

And then, _Did we save yours?_

He was, in all likelihood, dead. Odds were good that he had died in the attacks. Or in the rush to get off planet. Or, the gods only knew, if he was someone she had met in the past sixteen days since the end of the worlds, he could have been a casualty in one of their many jumps, lost to any of the hit-and-run Cylon attacks.

He may have been on board the Botanical Cruiser. Or, gods forgive her, the Olympic Carrier.

She would never know who he had been. And the dreams would almost certainly stop.

He was most likely dead. To think anything else would be to delude herself in the grossest and most unforgiveable way.

But he had, it seemed, saved her life before he passed from it.

That night, Laura said a prayer for the soul of the poor, beautiful man who had erased the cancer from her breast as if it had never existed.

 

* * *

 

She had a meeting the next day. Another of those endless, dull meetings with the Commander, Colonel Tigh, the incomprehensible Doctor Baltar, and an apparently endless parade of 'experts' who had miraculously survived with their sense of self-importance intact.

So utterly ridiculous, these panels. Such a waste of time. The real work of keeping the fleet running was being done despite these meetings, not because of them, and as short on sleep as they all were, it was hard to stay focused on one trivial debate after another when she knew more important decisions waited for each of them elsewhere.

She wasn't the only one to feel this way, she realized when she saw Commander Adama's eyes wander from the turbine engineer who was appealing for permission to set up a trial of solar power collectors on the Rising Star. It wasn't the engineer's field, no, sir, but he was convinced that there was a real improvement in fuel efficiency that might be possible if he was allowed to pursue his ideas. All he needed was some lab space and an assortment of very rare materials. Never mind that those same materials were needed to keep the fleet functional and Galactica's vipers flying.

Laura stifled a yawn at the impossibly naive man and looked up in time to meet the Commander's roving gaze. She almost smiled at him and thought she caught a flicker of sympathy in return.

A hint of movement at the far end of the table drew her attention, and she watched in amusement as the younger Adama managed to mime perfect attention to the discussion above the table; meanwhile, below the table, one dextrous hand dug silently into a side pocket of his uniform slacks to pull out a tiny metal canister--was that really a tin of Mintoids, of all vile things?--and flick it open with a thumb.

Apollo's polite attention was perfectly convincing, left hand resting motionless on the table while the right (barely visible, and only from Laura's position, she thought) set the tin on his thigh, extracted a single Extra Super Powerful mint, and then flipped the canister shut and slipped it back into his pocket. Next came the really delicate maneuver. While Laura watched from the corner of her eye, he snuck the lozenge between his lips while pretending to scratch his jaw. If she hadn't seen the tin of Mintoids under the table she would have missed the entire thing.

She had to admire the smoothness of the maneuver. Had to admire a few things, for that matter, from his chiseled profile to his long, deft hands.

She really shouldn't. Apollo was half her age, for crying out loud, and while she had eyes--and what straight woman wouldn't look at Lee Adama?--she refused to indulge them in absurdity. Not that she had anything better to do in these interminable meetings.

She risked a glance at his fingers, hating herself for ogling him again but, as usual, not quite enough to stop. There was nothing wrong, she'd told herself before, with admiring a work of art. She had no intention of touching. But those hands. It felt like a long time since she'd been close to anyone, and longer since she'd been with a man with long, dextrous hands like Apollo's.

She wondered what his hands would feel like on her skin. She wondered what his voice would sound like in the dark, shuddering her name.

She looked up and caught his eyes on her, and instantly wished she could scrub the last few minutes of speculation from her brain.

Oh, gods, she was blushing. Could he tell that she was blushing?

She was President of the Twelve Colonies, for frak's sake, and old enough to be his mother, and this would never do.

He smiled at her, an open smile with a hint of shy self-deprecation. Something in her belly twisted and flared warmly but she allowed her lips to curl up in a precise fraction of a smile. How long had she been in politics, after all? She could control her expression absolutely.

He cocked an eyebrow at her (not a look she'd seen on Apollo's face before, but damn, was it devastating) and tapped gently on the pocket that held the tin of Mintoids, asking without words if she'd like one. She shook her head subtly and he grinned, a quick flash of teeth, and looked away.

She took a normal breath, let it out. Then another. Didn't look at his hand, fidgeting against the pocket on his thigh. Instead, her eyes went to his left hand, the mute one, the one at rest on the conference table, ever so insincerely polite. His fingernails were short and tidy, with perfect white crescents at the base of each nail.

Where had she seen those hands before?

When she remembered, it hit her like a runaway battlestar.

How peculiar. How hilariously impossible. How deeply cruel (of the gods, of fate, of the unfeeling universe) that Captain Apollo should have the same long, beautiful hands as her dead soul mate.

Her dead soul mate, who was in the military. Her dead soul mate, whom she had met face to face and who had touched her sometime in the past three weeks. Her dead soul mate, who had appeared out of nowhere in her twenties and whose body had, at first, seemed awkward and helpless and _small_ \--

She heard herself breathe out the words before her mind could catch up to itself.

"Lords of Kobol. No."


	2. Chapter 2

"Lords of Kobol," The President said quietly but with dawning horror. "No."

Lee looked away as the rest of the room turned to face her. It had become habit, avoiding Laura Roslin. He'd slipped up today by offering her a Mintoid, flirting silently across the table, but he was good at keeping his distance. All right, he wasn't any good at it. But he would be. Eventually.

Instead of looking at her, Lee glanced around the room. The Commander seemed concerned at her outburst; Tigh was plainly offended; the inane scientist who had been speaking from the far end of the table looked shocked. Alone among them, Baltar stared off into some fantasy world of his own, smiling dumbly at a wall.

His father broke the silence. "Madam President? Is everything all right?"

"Yes, Commander." She rose with an apologetic smile, her voice quiet and firm. Lee didn't have to look to know that her face was shuttered against scrutiny. "I'm sorry for my rudeness, but you'll have to excuse me."

Without waiting for a response, she swept from the room, Billy towering at her heels. None of the men left in her wake seemed impressed by her rapid departure, but who was going to argue with the President? Especially when she could make an exit like that. Not that Lee was checking out her legs as she left. Not that she would know if he had.

For frak's sake, she was his soul mate. Wasn't he allowed to notice from time to time that she was gorgeous?

 

* * *

 

When Lee was five years old (and six, and seven, and eight, and you get the picture), he had a problem with bullies, and it was his own damn fault. Because, you see, he had a soul mate.

He was just starting preschool, tiny and precocious, with the slightest hint of his mother's Aquarian accent that she would later manage to expunge completely, but that Lee would never quite be able to shake. On the first day of school, the teacher asked each of the children to share something about themselves that made them special. Lee didn't have to think twice.

"I have a soul mate," he announced proudly. "She's all grown up and her bedroom smells pretty, like flowers. She's really pretty, too. I just know it."

No one said anything about it until the next day, when something hit him on the back of the head during recess. He turned at the sudden impact and saw a tennis ball rolling away. One of his classmates, Ricky, chased after the ball and yelled at Lee, "Wimp! Wussy! Baby!"

"What?" Lee said, tears filling his eyes.

A boy from another class ran up beside Lee, caught the ball when Ricky threw it, and promptly lobbed it into Lee's ribs. They both laughed as he doubled over, wheezing.

"I thought your stupid soul mate was supposed to help you with things like that," Ricky said. "Isn't she supposed to rescue you?"

"If you really have one," jeered the other boy. "Stupid baby. Crying for his soul mate! Who's all grown up and smells like flowers!"

"Freak!"

That recess set the standard for the next nine years of Caprican junior school.  Lee was _that kid_ , or later, _that guy, you know, the one with the soul mate, the one who thinks he's too good for everyone_. He never met anyone else in school who admitted to having a soul mate--not with his shining example as a preview of exactly what you could expect once the whole world knew you were special.

He often wished he could go back in time and stop his five-year-old self from boasting about his soul mate, but he never quite wished he didn't have one. Not even later, when she was dead.

 

* * *

 

Lee knew he loved her. It wasn't like they said, when they talked about soul mates. For him, there was no awkwardness in slipping into a stranger's body once a year, because she had never been a stranger. He couldn't remember a time before he knew her, a time before he had this: the knowledge that he was not alone in the universe, that somewhere out there was a person who would love him totally and completely, just as he was.

There was nothing deficient in his upbringing. Lee's parents showered him with affection, only child that he was for the first few years of his life. Even after Zak was born they gave him everything they could afford. And if some of it felt flawed or conditional, well, what family didn't put conditions on their love?

Lee knew how important he was to both of his parents, but even as a child he could never shake the feeling that he was letting his father down. His mother had no expectations; she would love him whether he was a painter or an athlete, a soldier or a drifter. His father, though--William Adama had _plans_ for his sons, and Lee was never sure he could measure up to the scale of those dreams.

Or maybe it was only that his father's expectations landed on him younger than they did on other boys. Lee was six years old when his father came home for two weeks' shore leave and got wind of what had been happening at school. He made no bones about what he thought Lee should do.

"Your mother will tell you otherwise," Bill said. "But she's wrong. Polite fixes aren't going to work here. The next time one of those other kids bothers you on the playground, you're not going to stand there or talk to him. You're going to sock that bully in the nose."

"With my sock?" Lee already knew that wasn't what his father meant, but he figured it was best to make sure. Just in case.

"With your fist."

"Oh."

Lee would never forget the look on his father's face when he came home from school the next day and said he couldn't do it. "I don't want to punch them, Dad."

Blank shock and dismay. "Why not?"

"What if someone gets hurt?"

Bill shook his head. "Don't you want them to get hurt after the way they've hurt you?"

"No," Lee said, having already thought it through on the bus ride home. "I don't think my soul mate would like it."

There was that look again. The look that Lee would eventually come to recognize as bewildered disappointment.

Little did he know that punching schoolyard bullies was only the first of many subjects on which he would disagree with his father. Laura Roslin, of course, pretty much topped the list.

 

* * *

 

The end of modern civilization wasn't the first time Lee's soul mate had died. He might have been six years old, but he wasn't an idiot. He knew what it meant when you stopped swapping into your soul mate's body. He wasn't especially good with a calendar yet, but it had been too long, he was sure of it. The last time it happened, he had woken up and looked out her window and there were apple blossoms. So when winter ended, his sixth birthday came and went, and then summer, and then leaves started to fall, and it had been _at least_ more than a year since he'd seen her, he knew something was wrong.

He didn't tell anyone she was dead. He'd made that mistake already, and he wasn't going to do it again. This time he kept his mouth shut, through junior school and then senior and military college, nodding along and putting up with endless ribbing about his soul mate without saying a word. And then, at last, he was rewarded for his compulsive silence. After twenty years, the body swaps started again, and while some things had changed in all that time, most hadn't. She was still smoking hot, she still slept alone, and even if he couldn't make it to the mirror to look at her face, he knew what he'd find if he ever got to see her: that she was heartrendingly beautiful and that she loved him.

It briefly occurred to him, during the attack on the Colonies, that she was probably dead (again)--and it hurt, the thought hurt like hell, but it was a familiar ache and one he could survive. Meeting her in the midst of the mad scramble to protect the fleet; nay, finding her _directing_ the attempt to collect and protect the fleet; now that, he thought, might destroy him.

Speaking his mind about his soul mate had never got him anywhere, though, and silence had been his best friend since he was six years old. That's why he kept his mouth shut when he met her.

 

* * *

 

Lee didn't know who she was the first time they met. He wasn't even sure who had introduced them, sometime in the course of the stuffy afterparty for the decommissioning ceremony (not to be confused with the _actual_ afterparty on Galactica's hangar deck later that night).

He had noticed her, of course, in the abstract way that one couldn't not see a beautiful woman, even if one was preoccupied and even if she was wearing a truly awful suit. But Kara was in the brig, and his father was giving a circuitous and probably off-the-cuff speech about responsibility and sacrifice and the sins visited on children--why that man couldn't stick to his notes, for frak's sake--and Lee was a little distracted. Then the Cylons invaded and--

Well, suffice it to say that he knew who she was the _second_ time they met.

It was the smallest thing that gave her away, too, though he wouldn't figure it out until later. Her shampoo smelled like freesia.

When they pulled Lee and his fried viper (correction: Husker's fried viper) out of space and brought him up to the passenger deck of Colonial Heavy 798, the last thing he could have expected was to be punched in the gut with the visceral certainty that he knew this woman and he loved her.

The air left his lungs all at once. For a few seconds, he couldn't remember where he was or how to breathe. It was too much and he didn't know _how_ he knew, but he damn well knew.

He had met Laura Roslin on Galactica and somehow managed to overlook the most important piece of information he'd come across in, oh, ever: She was his soul mate.

Or maybe he had passed out in his dead cockpit and none of this was real.

"The lady's in charge," he told Doral, and then he set about doing everything he could not to disappoint her. Because how did you impress a stunningly beautiful woman two decades your senior who was also President of the Twelve Colonies?

So he knew from that minute on. But he was also not quite sure. Or he convinced himself he wasn't sure. Wasn't something supposed to happen when you first met your soul mate, or when you touched for the first time? He hadn't felt a thing. He hadn't even known until the second time they met. Maybe it was all in his head. Maybe he was crazy, and Laura Roslin was a damn fine President and a ferociously beautiful woman, but she wasn't _his_ anything.

He was definitely crazy. But that didn't keep him from wanting her.

 

* * *

 

Kara knew. Kara had always known. Lee had learned as an adult to keep his fool mouth shut and to never, ever mention his soul mate to anyone. Among those who had known him since early childhood, he did his best to discourage conversation and dodge questions about his mystery girl. Hadn't he met her yet? No. Where was she? He didn't know. Did he think he'd be one of the lucky ones and find her some day? Who knew.

And yet. The first time he met Kara, desperate for a shoulder, he'd found himself telling her everything while Zak contributed drunken commentary and later snored loudly from the couch across the room. Lee told her about the body swaps, the childhood bullies, even the persistent fear that he could never be good enough for the woman whose gracefully appointed bedrooms he'd glimpsed--or that she'd have no use for him, given the difference in their ages. (Kara snorted and pointedly checked him out, and he dropped that line of conversation, but the worry lingered.)

Then he mentioned the mysterious years when he'd thought she was dead, when the body swaps had stopped for most of two decades.

"Coma, maybe?" Kara offered.

Lee shrugged, uncomfortable. "I guess." But for all that he'd only ever seen her body and her bedroom, that didn't fit with his impressions. Maybe he was projecting, but her life seemed pretty darn put together for someone who'd been in a coma for seventeen or eighteen years.

"Drugs?"

"She's not that kind of--" he stopped himself. Definitely projecting, then.

Kara, being Kara, never knew when not to push. "How do you know?"

Lee wanted to punch back hard, but he already liked this smart-mouthed woman his little brother had found to love, so he shook his head and leashed his temper. "I don't."

They slept together a few times after Zak's death, inconsolable but trying to help one another cope. They'd go out, get wasted, tumble into bed and frak like rabbits until they collapsed from sheer exhaustion and grief. It didn't mean anything. Kara missed Zak, and Lee had a soul mate out there waiting to be found.

Neither of them was looking for love. So the friendship they built in the gaping hole Zak had left in both their lives came as a surprise.

They never managed to get assigned to the same place at the same time, but they kept in touch, despite neither being the sort of person who kept in touch. They sent letters and made expensive trans-ship calls. They bailed each other out of shitty situations. They talked about Zak, and Kara's guilt. They talked about everything else. They frakked. They fought. They were friends.

(Lee never felt so lucky in his life as he did when he realized that he'd survived the frakking apocalypse with his newly discovered soul mate, his father, and Kara, too.)

Still, for some inexplicable reason, Lee didn't tell Kara anything personal about Laura Roslin. She was the President. Lee was her advisor. Lee respected her. He'd followed her into battle after the world ended, and he'd do it again. (He loved her just as he'd always loved her, down to the core of his bones and the iron in his blood, and he didn't know how to articulate that to himself, much less to another human being, because she was so astonishing and dazzling and strong and he was afraid he was going mad.)

And then, just a few days after they escaped their indefatigable Cylon pursuit from Caprica, Kara got drunk playing triad and made an entirely predictable pass at him as he helped her back to their duty locker.

Without thinking about what he was doing or why, Lee pushed her away.

"Dude," she slurred. She leaned in again to kiss him but he held her at arm's length. "What's your problem?"

"Nothing," he said quietly, steering her toward her rack. "You're drunk."

"I'm often drunk. We've screwed when I'm drunk. Whatsamatter?"

"Nothing," he repeated.

"Not nothing," she mumbled. "You're being strange."

"Kara--"

She grabbed his hand and placed it indelicately on her chest. "Frak me, Lee. You know you want--" She stopped, her hand clutching his atop her breast. Her eyes went wide and she practically shouted in his face, "Oh! You've met her!"

"Shhhh!" He glanced around, carefully withdrawing from her grip, but no one seemed to be awake to notice them despite the volume of Kara's delighted cackle.

She bounced manically on her bunk and almost bashed their heads together when he turned to face her again. "You so totally have. Lee!"

"No, I--"

"Tell me everything!"

"There's nothing to tell." He caught her and shoved her back as she slid off the bed and almost to the floor. "For goodness' sake, Kara."

"Lee, how long have we been friends?" She looked up at him knowingly from her pillow. "You're telling me. Everything. Tomorrow, when I'm sober enough to remember it."

She turned onto her side and started to snore, and Lee muttered to himself, "If I'm very lucky, you won't be sober enough tomorrow to remember this conversation."

 

* * *

 

He was checking out a broken valve on a viper when Kara found him on the flight deck the next afternoon.

He almost brained himself at her smart, "Captain Adama, sir!" He pulled his head out from under the viper and was hit with a salute and the cheeky grin that signaled imminent danger for whatever poor soul happened to be in her crosshairs.

That would be him, he supposed.

"Lieutenant," he answered warily.

"We had an appointment."

He kept his face carefully blank. "Did we?"

The Chief, hovering nearby to help Lee with the valve, gave them both a skeptical look and faded away.

"To discuss personnel." There was that grin again, in case he was under any illusion about the topic they'd actually be discussing. "That longstanding matter that finally came to a head. No pun intended, sir."

He grabbed her elbow and spun her toward the main causeway. "Good grief, Kara."

She laughed and pulled her arm from his grip as she kept pace beside him.

"You'll have started the rumors flying again," he muttered to her darkly as they passed from the flight deck into Galactica's corridors.

"About us? Oh please," she said, shrugging. "Those rumors never stopped."

"Don't tell me that," Lee growled.

"I'm sorry," she said, utterly insincere. "Think your ladylove's going to be scared off by little ol' me?"

"Probably," he muttered, then reconsidered his answer given the lady in question and her backbone of steel. "Nah, she could take you."

Now it was Kara's turn to level him with a skeptical look as they turned into the pilots' ready room. "Oh, really."

"Really." He knew how to do smug. Kara had taught him smug.

She tilted her head and fisted both hands on her hips. "So why haven't I heard anything about this paragon of military excellence?"

He snorted loudly, trying to imagine Laura Roslin in a set of duty blues. While he couldn't deny that the thought turned him on--and, wow, did it ever--the mental image made him feel like his brain was going cross-eyed. He sat heavily in the front row. "Paragon," he wheezed. "Of military--ahaha--military excell--bahaa--"

Kara sank into the seat next to him, blinking in confusion. "Lee? Are you okay?"

He raised one finger authoritatively. "I am most definitely not okay. In fact, I may very well be losing it. Or have lost it." He rolled his shoulders. "I know exactly when, too. A few weeks back, when the colonies--when the Cylons--"

He caught the worried look on her face and realized that wasn't the point.

"Never mind. See, right after the signal went out that the colonies had been hit, I met this woman. Again. We'd already met once."

"Your...?"

"Yes." He nodded once, sharply. "Well, no. Maybe. I don't know. I think she is, but she--oh, Kara. It's like I always told you." Now that he'd met Laura Roslin, he didn't quite want to say it out loud--but he sure as hell knew what the problem was. "She's too good for me."

"Come on, Lee," she teased. "If she's your soul mate, then she has to feel the same way about you. What did she say when you met?"

He laughed. " _A pleasure, Captain._ "

Kara rolled her eyes. "And the second time? On Galactica?"

"On Colonial One. And she doesn't know."

Kara squinted but missed the important part. "What do you mean, she doesn't know?"

"She hasn't figured it out."

Now she was glaring. "And you're not telling her."

"Nope."

"Coward."

"Yup." He let his head fall into his hands.

"I never figured you for such a coward."

He didn't respond.

"So who is she? Spit it out, Lee. I dare you. I double dog dare--"

He didn't have the energy to roll his eyes. "The President of the frakking Colonies."

"No shit, Lee." She grinned, that huge, monstrous grin that made any sane person back away in terror.

Under the circumstances, Lee could only smile bleakly in return. "None whatsoever."

 

* * *

 

So it was Kara's fault.

When you boiled it down, most things were.

He was going to talk to Laura Roslin about this soul mate business. Even if he had no idea what he was going to say. Even if she killed him for insinuating that--

She wouldn't put him out an airlock, would she? She'd almost certainly fire him as her military advisor. Tell him to stay the frak away from her. Maybe that would be for the best. But if nothing else, he was a military asset, and she was a ruthlessly practical President, and at the very least his father would want him piloting frakking vipers--once Bill Adama was done laughing his ass off at his idiot son who still believed he had a soul mate and that his soul mate was _President Roslin_. For frak's sake, he was going to be the laughingstock of the fleet, what the frak was he thinking--

But he had run out of time to think in the course of the flight to Colonial One. Standing in front of the curtained door to her office, he shrugged uncomfortably, regretting that his favourite uniform jacket was still hanging damply in his rack. The fit of this one should have been the same, but he never could get it to lie straight across his shoulders.

Then Billy Kikeiya was telling him to wait and giving him that look again, the one that said Lee wasn't good enough to wipe the President's boots. It happened he agreed. And yet.

He loved her. So.

Into the lion's den.

 

* * *

 

"Madam President," he said, reaching for formality in the face of the utter insanity of what he was about to do. He stood at attention and tried not to let her see just how hard he was shaking. "We need to talk."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Go get her, Lee!
> 
> Not to be melodramatic or anything, but this chapter was kinda the bane of my existence (until chapter 5, which was also the bane of my existence), so fingers crossed and here's hoping.

She wasn't thinking about him. She was reading reports about fleet resources and the ongoing shortages that were making life hell on most of the smaller ships. She wasn't struggling to focus. Not at all.

But really, of all the outrageous--

_Lee._

Lee Adama.

Flyboy. Pretty boy. CAG. Commander Adama's wayward son. Her military advisor. Her Captain Apollo. Her--

It couldn't be.

Certainly, they made a good team. Yes, he was good looking--beautiful, even. He knew how to pilot a ship, command a team, wheedle life-saving ploys out of half-remembered technology, and he could debate ethics and philosophy like a scholar.

...Or a teacher.

None of which made him her soul mate.

And yet. He matched every godsdamn known fact about the un-wished-for soul mate in question, and that... quite possibly did.

Maybe.

And he had to be at least 20 frakking years younger than her.

Oh, shit.

(Oh gods, how had the thought of an age gap never occurred to her as an explanation for--?)

(Shit frak damn frakking godsdamn it.)

Lee had to be, oh, two decades younger than her venerable 47 years. And she'd been 21 when she had the first 'dream' in which she could barely move and wasn't able to control her soul mate's tiny, helpless, uncoordinated body.

Shit.

Frak.

Damn it.

So this was what came of the worlds ending, and unprecedented responsibility for the survival of the human species, and believing (albeit briefly) that you're dying--and chronic stress, and loneliness, and sleep deprivation. She was finally losing her mind. She almost laughed out loud.

Leland Adama was her soul mate, and it was becoming more and more difficult to stay in denial.

 

* * *

 

That didn't mean she was going to do anything about it. Or say anything to him. Ever.

 

* * *

 

"Madam President?" Billy asked carefully, in a tone that made her suspect it wasn't the first time he'd said the words in the past few seconds.

Laura looked up, rubbing ineffectually at a tension headache in the middle of her forehead. "Billy. Yes?"

He smiled sympathetically. "You look like you could use more sleep."

"Couldn't we all?" She shrugged, feeling the tug between her shoulder blades that came of slouching over a desk for too long. "I keep promising myself eight hours and then... well. What fire needs my attention today?"

"Uh. Um. Not exactly..." He did that awkward shuffling thing that made her want to pat him on the head and shove a cookie at him. Had she ever been that young? Maybe a lifetime or two ago. "It's not exactly a fire," he said. "You have a visitor."

"Who is it?"

"Captain Adama."

"Oh, no." If her head had hurt before... "Did I say that out loud?"

He nodded cautiously.

"Is there any chance you could pretend I'm not here?"

"Might be a little late for that," Billy admitted. "I could tell him that you have another appointment in fifteen minutes, so he'll have to--?"

"No," Laura stopped him with something she thought might masquerade as a smile. "It wouldn't help. Send him in."

Billy threw a disapproving glance at the curtain separating her private office from the chaos of improvised living quarters filling the rest of Colonial One, but he didn't move. "Madam President. Are you sure?"

"Yes. Thank you, Billy. I'll be fine."

He muttered something under his breath about Captain Adama that was just unflattering enough for her to pretend she hadn't heard it, then ducked through the curtain. A moment later, a familiar and altogether too welcome face came through in the opposite direction, halting in military rest a few feet from her desk.

"Madam President," Lee said.

"Lee." Mentally, she shook herself. What was she _doing_? Soul mates or no, they weren't on a first name basis. And never would be, if good sense had anything to do with it.

"Madam President," Apollo said again, looking tense enough to swallow his tongue. "We need to talk."

Oh, no.

It had been too much to hope that he would never figure it out. Still, it would have been so very convenient.

She nodded cooly. "Certainly, Captain Apollo. What can I do for you?"

She watched him weigh his options, that expressive face telegraphing inner debate. Surely he had a game plan, if this was what it appeared to be? But no, it seemed her brash Captain had launched himself over from Galactica to confront her without giving a passing thought to what he'd say when he arrived.

Ah, but he was wavering. In a moment he'd be making some eminently reasonable excuse for his unscheduled visit and they'd be back on sane, normal footing again.

He straightened his spine and met her eyes.

"You're trying to drive me away," he said.

"Not hard enough, apparently." She sighed. "Have a seat, Lee."

He sat stiffly, shoulders stubbornly square and his spine rigid, and stared at her. She stared back.  The clock ticked. He looked away, cleared his throat, frowned.

She broke first, her tone dry. "You wanted to talk to me?"

"Not really, no." He glanced at her face as if he couldn't help himself, then looked away again.

"Well, that's helpful." She smiled. "I don't really want to talk to you, either."

Lee snickered, still staring at the floor. "I was getting a lot of practice at _not_ talking to you."

"Good." She laughed. "Let's keep it that way."

"We can just carry on as we have been," he said, and it abruptly wasn't funny. She was dimly aware that they were staring at each other hungrily now, and she didn't know where to put her hands or what to say, and this was all so unlike her and she despised it.

"How long have you known?" he asked softly.

Laura shook her head. "I don't know anything."

Standing, she circled to the front of her desk, leaned one hip against its polished surface, and looked down at him. She crossed her arms and tried not to think about how often Richard had used this particular intimidation tactic to put her in her place--not that it had worked, not for years, not once she'd seen through it.

Of course, she'd never possessed Lee Adama's flagrant inability to defer to authority. Which explained why--where she had stayed seated time and again, letting Richard talk down to her from his perch--Lee was on his feet, natural as breathing, the moment she'd settled hipshot against the desk.

And how much did she _not_ want to start comparing herself and Lee to her dissolute past with Richard Adar, because that way lay madness and dysfunction and a secret affair that had dragged on for eight years and--no. She wouldn't be another Adar to her Lee. But then, Lee would never be her. And thank the gods for that.

Stunned speechless, she could only watch as Lee moved into her space, reaching out slowly--so slowly she could easily have stopped him--to brush a stray lock of hair behind her ear. He looked perfectly earnest and entirely too edible. She held her breath as he grazed her cheek with his fingers and brushed his thumb against her lips. His other hand drifted down to settle on the curve of her hip as if it had been made to fit there.

"I'm not--I'm not reading this wrong, am I?" he rasped, his Aquarian accent more pronounced than she could remember hearing it. She wondered how rough his voice would sound if she were to turn now and drag him through the second curtain, the one behind her desk, and into her bed.

"You aren't. But--" She shook her head and forced him to release her. "Lee. We can't do this. We can't even have this conversation."

She put her hands on his chest and pushed gently until he had to back away from her. She tried not to notice the sudden chill of air in the space between them, or the way his body moved under her touch. She pulled her hands back sharply and he made a small, unhappy noise.

"Madam Pres--" He swallowed audibly. "Laura. If this was just about us wanting something crazy, being drawn to each other--but it isn't. The gods made us this way. The gods want us to be together."

There it was. It was inarguable.

And he was so young. And she had to find a way to work with his father. And the gods could not possibly will something so absurd. But they had.

"I don't care about the gods," she breathed. She closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to see his face. "I care about humanity. This fleet won't survive the President frakking the Commander's son."

When he released her hip, she felt the loss of warmth like a physical blow.

She looked up to find him glaring at her, his hands fisted at his sides. "And what if they aren't just frakking?"

"How do you intend to demonstrate that difference to them, Lee?"

"I don't have to demonstrate it to them. Only to you."

If only it were so simple. But real life never was.

"You're very beautiful," she said to him sadly. "And very young."

"With all due respect," and he pulled a face as he said the words, "I'm not some princess in a castle, Madam President. I know what I'm doing."

Snorting back a giggle, she raised her brows. "And what are you doing?"

"Propositioning someone I like very much, and being rejected, I think."

"Hmm." Her throat (or something very near it, but definitely not her heart) ached. "I think you might be right."

 

* * *

 

Which is when the fleetwide alarm sounded and Lee realized just how unconscionably stupid he had been.

 

* * *

 

 _"Where the frak were you?"_ the Commander snarled the minute the hatch to his quarters had shut behind Lee. "The fleet is under attack by Cylon raiders and my CAG is AWOL? Do you understand how serious an incident this could have been?"

Lee dodged a furious glare only to find himself looking unhappily around at the clutter of books, antiques, _stuff_ that filled the room. His father's quarters always made him feel inadequate, like he hadn't lived enough, or lived well enough, to accumulate half the curios and wisdom he should have.

His thoughts flew to Laura Roslin's provisionary office on Colonial One, devoid of personality save for the whiteboard on the wall with its single vital statistic.

Thinking of her icy steel, he straightened. "I was on board Colonial One. As you well know."

"Unacceptable."

"Duly noted, sir."

With a sigh, Galactica's Commander relaxed into Lee's father--a person he had even less idea how to please. "Lee. Talk to me."

He couldn't hold back the sneer. "What would you like me to talk about, sir?"

Bill glared at him for a moment before he spoke. "You were AWOL, Captain. What excuse can you make for yourself?"

"I was advising the President of the Colonies."

"Were you."

"Yes."

"From here on out, you will obey regs and inform a duty officer before you disembark from Galactica."

"Yes, sir."

"And one more thing." Bill met his eyes and, if it was possible, his frown deepened. "I don't know what's going on between you and the President, but it _stops_ _now_."

And there it was. The Commander His Father had spoken, and frak you if you happened to disagree with him.

"Nothing is _going on_ between myself and President Roslin." Lee stared him down. "And whether or not there was, I will not stop advising the President in a time of crisis just to placate some farce of public opinion."

Lee realized he'd made a mistake somewhere along the line when he caught the too-knowing look Bill leveled at him.

As if he couldn't believe the words coming out of his own mouth, Bill muttered, "You think she's your soul mate. Don't you?"

"No," Lee choked out. "No, I don't _think_ she's anything."

"Do you realize what a political nightmare this could be?"

"Oh, that's rich. You're concerned about the politics of a situation? You?" Lee immediately regretted the sarcasm, but his father only sighed.

"Lee, if you're happy, then I'm happy for you." Bill shrugged. "But could you have picked a more unsuitable--"

Lee found himself, for once, not rising to the bait. He sighed and took a seat. "I think that's the point. I didn't choose her." _And she certainly didn't choose me. Who in their right mind would?_

Certainly not the President of the Twelve Colonies, flawless and unimpeachable Laura Roslin, who wanted nothing more from him than his knowledge of the military. Well, at least she hadn't called her security to throw him off Colonial One today. Small mercies and all that.

Unaware of Lee's dour train of thought, Bill shook his head with something almost like wonder. "You really didn't, did you?"

 

* * *

 

Lee was called from the mess four days later by a fresh-faced young viper jockey (Caesar? Caspar? Damn it, he needed to get on top of the new faces and names) who mumbled something about a wireless call from Colonial One.

"I'll take it in the pilots' ready room," Lee told him, shoving his tray away with a casualness that was entirely feigned.

Of course the President had called him. She needed military intel. She wanted his brain, his experience. His up-close-and-personal knowledge of Commander William Adama. If only for practical reasons, she was never going to leave Lee dangling indefinitely.

He'd only thought she might.

"Madam President?" he said, settling into a seat, his voice embarrassingly shaky.

"Lee," she said softly, just his name, and that alone was enough to drain the tension from his neck and shoulders.

"Laura," he essayed, and she replied with a soft hum of affirmation.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"What? What's wrong?"

"My--" She paused as if searching for words. "Lee. We can't continue meeting like we have been."

"I know," he said, and his voice sharpened as he quoted. " _The fleet won't survive the President fr--_ "

She interrupted him, thank goodness. "I said some terrible things to you."

"You haven't," he said too quickly.

"I have."

"No," he insisted. "I had to open my mouth and say--I ruined everything, didn't I?"

"Not at all."

He sat back and leaned against the bulkhead. After a few seconds, he heard her sigh echo down the line. "Lee. You haven't done anything wrong."

"I know," he said, "that in a million years, I could not be enough for you to want to--"

"It's not like that," she snapped. Softer, teasingly, she said, "My Captain Apollo. Can you possibly imagine--are you so blind to your own charms?"

He laughed bleakly.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said. "Sometime, I'll have to disabuse you of the notion that--"

The sound of her voice abruptly cut off. Lee could hear a background murmur and then silence on the line for a few seconds.

"I'm sorry, Lee," she said finally. "I'm needed on the Adriatic. For now, though, my dearest military advisor," and he blinked at the warmth that suffused her voice, before he remembered that she was letting him down easy and that any feelings she might choose to display were nothing but a polite and deliberately chosen smokescreen, "I'm afraid we're going to have to continue all of our meetings over the wireless."

"I understand," he said blankly. "The fleet is what's most important."

"It is."

"I know."

"Thank you, Lee," she said softly, and the line cut out.

 

* * *

 

"Lee. What are you doing?"

Lee lurched in his seat and grabbed at the table. He hadn't heard Kara walk in. Come to think of it, he hadn't heard the hatch open, either. He'd been sitting at this table for... he wasn't sure how long. But for once, it had been quiet in the duty locker, and he'd been able to sit and think. Or sit and _not_ think. One way or the other.

The quiet had been good. But now Kara was here and Kara was the antithesis of quiet.

She fell gracelessly into the seat across from him and groaned. "What's wrong this time?"

He heard his own voice before he realized he was going to respond. "She's my soul mate and she doesn't want me."

"I thought that was what was wrong the last time."

He shrugged bleakly. "She still doesn't want me? Except now it's official policy."

"And you've been sitting here and, what, staring at a bulkhead ever since?" Kara stood, extended a hand, and dragged him to his feet when he took it. "Come here, moron."

He followed meekly as she led him to her rack, manoeuvred him onto it, and then shoved him back. "Move over."

He slid toward the bulkhead and wasn't surprised when she lay down next to him and pulled the privacy curtain closed.

Lee reached out carefully, just far enough to touch her wrist, and she clasped his hand painfully tight. A choked sob sounded in the tight space. Only belatedly did he realize it was his.

"We talked today," he said at last, "and we've agreed not to meet face to face any more."

"I'm going to kick her Presidential ass." It was too dark to see Kara's expression, even inches away, but he could hear the smirk emerge in her voice as she added, "What, you still think she could take me?"

She was never going to let that one go. (And yes, he still did.) "Kara."

"Lee."

Even knowing she wouldn't see it, he glared at her.

She laughed softly. "Or I could tell her how great you are in the sack?"

He groaned, shoving his face into her shoulder.

"But that might backfire, I guess. Or it might make her jealous! That could be a good thing, right? Your call, you know her better than--"

"No, no, and no." She was laughing, and he couldn't help laughing, too, even if his cheeks were wet and he couldn't quite catch his breath. "Gods. A world of no."

"So that's a yes, then?"

"Kara. Shaddup."

He fell asleep with his head on her shoulder. He wished his first thought the next morning wasn't to wonder what Laura Roslin would think of his waking up in Kara Thrace's rack.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've slowed down my posting schedule, because I realized it's unlikely chapters 6-7 will be ready to go in time if I keep posting every two weeks. (Also I wanted to keep trucking away at 6 instead of taking a break to polish chapter 4.) But! Here it is. You can hooopefully expect updates every three weeks going forward.

"Lee," the Commander said as Lee walked through the hatch to his father's quarters two days later, "can you tell me when this picture was taken?"

He shoved a paper flimsy across his desk. Lee glanced down to see the gossip section of _Flagship Hope_ , the weekly rag being put out by a civilians' group of bored assholes on Cloud Nine with too much time on their hands--though they didn't call themselves _assholes_ or _bored_ , or the page _gossip_ , of course. _Fleet Watch!_ ran the headline and, below it, a celebrity photo that lent itself to scandalous misinterpretation followed by a series of equally ridiculous blurbs.

Yesterday's edition sported a photo of Lee and President Roslin, smiling at each other across the command deck in Galactica's CIC. Lee's photographic self was gazing at her with the kind of abject, puppy-like adoration he'd hoped he hadn't been broadcasting to the world. More surprising was the look of warmth and affection she leveled at him in return. He stared at the image for a moment before glancing up at his father.

"I remember it, yes. Last week's strategy meeting. You were there."

"I thought so," Bill grunted. "Well, you've hit fleet scuttlebutt now. Nothing to be done. Read it."

Lee looked back down at the paper.

> PILOTS IN LOVE?
> 
> Captain Lee "Apollo" Adama and Lieutenant Kara "Starbuck" Thrace continue to flaunt their affair for the entire crew to see, according to an exclusive _Flagship Hope_ source inside the pilots' lounge. "It's especially outrageous considering he's her commanding officer, but even if he wasn't CAG, she was _engaged to marry his brother_. That has to count for something." Seems that's part of the appeal and Starbuck has a thing for Adama men. The Commander had better watch out!

"Nothing new there," Lee said. "This could be the same piece of trash they printed last week."

"Not that one."

" _William Adama's Secret Soul Mate_ ," Lee read the next title aloud. "Wow, Dad. Out of curiosity, I don't want to scald my eyes or anything, but who is it?"

Dry as bones, Bill said, "Haven't I told you? Saul, of course."

"Of course."

Bill shrugged.  "Not that one, either."

Lee glanced at the third title and flushed. "Yeah. I see it. "

> THE PRESIDENT AND HER FLYBOY
> 
> Captain Lee Adama, who flies under the call sign "Apollo", was AWOL during last week's attack. Our inside source, a highly placed officer in Galactica's ranks who wishes to remain anonymous, informs us that Apollo could not be located in the course of the latest Cylon strike. Only after the fleet jumped was it determined that Apollo had been on Colonial One without informing anyone, and it is widely believed that this is not his first unscheduled trip to the President's quarters.
> 
> "He's over there all the time," our source said. "Between you and me, there are a lot of people asking exactly how often President Roslin really needs to meet with her _special_ advisor."
> 
> Just how special is Adama Junior to his Commander-in-Chief? "They have pet names for each other. She calls him Captain Apollo and he calls her Madam Lorelei. It's disgusting. They'll flirt in public, right in front of anyone."
> 
> Commander Adama declined to comment on his son's whereabouts during the most recent Cylon attack, or on either Adama's relationship with President Roslin.

Lee reminded himself that shredding the paper in his hands wouldn't do anything about the hundreds of copies circulating in the fleet. Instead, he snorted. " _Flagship Hope_ has a high estimation of my stamina. President Roslin _and_ Kara, both."

"They also have no way of knowing that the ladies in question would team up to assassinate you if they found out you were carrying on with both of them."

"They would, wouldn't they?" Lee grinned.

"You have dangerous taste in women, son."

"Better watch out, yourself. I hear Kara's gunning for you next."

Bill snorted into his cup of coffee.

 

* * *

 

Laura hadn't spoken to Lee in four days and it... hurt. It pulled at her, in ways she didn't want to admit, even (especially) to herself.

She wanted to pick up the wireless and hear his voice. Wanted, more than that, to have him show up on her proverbial doorstep again--despite everything she had said, despite having all the right reasons for keeping her distance--wanted him on Colonial One, standing in front of her and arguing with her cool, responsible, practical logic so she could slide off her desk instead of pushing him away, step into his arms and up against that ridiculous body, and then tilt her head up the inch or two it would take to meet his lips--

But she had made a call, and it was the right one, and she was going to live with it. Because this wasn't a fairy tale, she wasn't a hero or a victim, and the world had already ended, and nothing she wanted could absolve her of responsibility to the survivors.

She knew that. But she couldn't stop thinking about Lee.

She'd never had this problem before. She had been single, she had been in relationships, she had been both states simultaneously for years (thank you/frak you, Richard Adar), but she had never _longed_ for anyone, and certainly not after slamming a door in the face of what might have been.

It was over.

She was finished with this.

 

* * *

 

Lee stared down at the receiver for a few more seconds before giving up on the internal debate over whether to greet his soul mate, the President of the Twelve Colonies, a woman who wanted nothing to do with him, by her title or by name. Shrugging the wireless handset to his ear, he opened with a sour, "Hello?"

"Tell me about your father's involvement in the Virgon Riots."

Lee blinked. She was calling to ask him about the _Riots_? He didn't know much about that particular episode in Colonial history--no one on Caprica really talked about it beyond a brief passage in the geopolitics textbooks--but he knew enough to understand why she asked. "The Virgon ships giving you trouble?"

"They're trying," she said, biting humor filtering through her matter-of-fact tone despite the tinny wireless connection.

"They don't want to take orders from Boskirk's Butcher."

"No one has used that particular epithet, but yes, that's the impression I'm getting."

Lee shook his head, as much at her as at the situation in the fleet. "I was five years old at the time."

"I am aware of that," she said dryly.

He didn't know anything that wasn't in an official historical record. And yet. Just hearing her voice had made the almost painful tightness in his chest begin to uncoil. He could tell her that he couldn't help, and she'd talk to his father or find a history book somewhere. Or he could tell her what little he knew and keep this conversation going for a few minutes longer.

She had already rejected him. He was pathetic. Utterly, inescapably pathetic. But at least he knew what he was.

"The Riots lasted a little over a week. My father was called in on the fourth day to manage troop deployment in Boskirk and the outskirts of Virgon City. He was there until the last day of mop-up a few months later. What do you want to know?"

 

* * *

 

She couldn't stop. She saw his face when she closed her eyes at night. She thought about how his body had felt under her hands when she'd pushed him away.

She couldn't stop thinking about the annual nightmarish body swaps... and the ones that hadn't been nightmarish at all.

That had been _Lee's_ body she had been inside. _Lee Adama's_ body that she had admired, when she should have been trying to figure out who he was. She knew that she would never wake up seeing through his eyes again, now that they had met--and she shouldn't feel like she had lost something precious in that equation, but she did, and she hated herself more than a little for it.

 

* * *

 

"I'm sorry to bother you, Lee, but I need your help with military jargon."

"Laura," he said, brain still too fogged with sleep to think before he spoke. "It's good to hear your voice."

The pause on the other end of the line forcibly shook the cobwebs from his head. He'd rushed straight from his rack to take her wireless call--but in retrospect, keeping her waiting a few minutes while he grabbed some caffeine might have been wiser.

"I'm sorry," he said into her silence. "That was forward of me. Should I...?"

"No, no," she said gently. "You surprised me, that's all."

"Have you slept yet, Madam President?" He wasn't sure what kind of hours they were keeping on Colonial One, but he couldn't imagine even the President needed to be working at 0300 hours.

Her chuckle reverberated down the wireless connection. "Are you trying to mother-hen me, Lee?"

"No?"

"That's a shame," she said at last. "I am sorry for waking you. I really had lost track of the time. And no, I haven't slept yet. Maybe I should."

"You called for a reason," he said. He was sure she'd mentioned a reason, back before his brain came online.

"Military jargon," she said. "I can't follow some of these reports because I don't know what any of the acronyms mean."

"Like what?"

"CAP. CAG. CIC. That's a place, isn't it? Oh, and there's another one on this transcript: Galactica Actual."

He was certain she'd been introduced to the CIC on her tour two weeks ago. He was also sure that she spoke to his father on a nearly daily basis, and Bill Adama never picked up a wireless call without announcing himself as Actual.

But what the heck. He was awake now, and she wanted to talk military jargon. Who was Lee to argue with the President?

 

* * *

 

Who was she kidding, anyway? She was too old to meet her soul mate, and Lee was too young to possibly want someone bitter and worn like her.

But he had propositioned her. Had argued with her. Had only barely touched her (hadn't even kissed her yet, for frak's sake) but she felt as if the imprint of his hands was branded on her skin.

Had been branded on her skin for weeks, ever since he'd shoved past her in the cockpit of the newly-dubbed Colonial One, and she was the fool who hadn't realized it until now.

But this was _wrong_. He had been an infant the first time she had woken up trapped inside his tiny frame. He'd been five years old during the Virgon Riots. He had been...22? 23? Barely more than a child, three years ago, when she had stopped running and let the soul swap thing happen again. She was a monster for lusting after him, but it was even worse than that. She _missed_ him.

She missed their conversations. She missed the way he looked at her, the glimmer of shared humour when their eyes met. She missed the way she felt as _Captain Apollo_ rolled off her tongue. She missed his face and his voice and the fact that he would never be hers, but that she was still allowed to look, because damn, who wouldn't want to look at that?

(She could happily look at him every day, a mutinous voice inside her head whispered; hear Lee's voice, kiss those lips, frak that incredible physique, be held in his arms and know he loved her every day of her life--)

No. Not Laura Roslin.

 

* * *

 

"I have to ask your help again, Lee."

"Anything you need, Madam President."

He couldn't tell whether her throaty hum was meant to convey pleasure or discomfort at his words. Before he could fixate, though, she said, "I've had some... complaints... about one of your fighter pilots."

He bit back a laugh. "First of all, they're called _viper_ pilots. And second, I'll talk to Kara."

He could hear the answering smile even through her prim tone. "Perhaps I won't ask how you know the culprit before I can even tell you the charge."

"Doesn't matter what the problem is. Fifty cubits say it's Kara Thrace people are complaining about. Probably with good reason."

She laughed. "I think I'm looking forward to meeting your friend Kara."

"She wants to meet you, too." Frak. And if Lee had a medal for every time he opened his mouth without thinking around Laura frakking Roslin--

Scrambling for safer ground, he said, "So what did Kara do this time?"

"Several of the civilian captains are claiming that one of Galactica's vipers has been buzzing their ships during training runs. Is that the right word? Buzzing?"

"Yes." Lee sighed. "And it has Kara written all over it."

"Mmm. Well. You're the CAG. I leave the matter in your capable hands, Captain."

Lee tried not to think about other things he wished she'd entrust to his hands.

 

* * *

 

Billy was hovering again. Laura glanced up for long enough to smile at him, then returned her eyes to the page in front of her.

"Go ahead," she said, still scrawling notes in the margins. "I'm almost done with these."

He cleared his throat. "We, uh, got the latest survey results back from the fleet."

She looked up when he didn't say anything further. "And?"

"Your approval rating is rising."

She almost laughed. "As a result of that ridiculous puff piece?"

"Yes." He looked down at the papers in his hands as if reading them again might change what they said.

"Goodness." She took off her glasses and rubbed at her aching eyes. What a world. Replacing her glasses, she muttered, "So why aren't I frakking him, again?"

Billy blanched. "I didn't--uh--that is--"

"I'm sorry, Billy. That was nothing you needed to hear."

"No, no. Don't worry about it, Madam President." He shook his head. "Captain Adama is very--well--very. I just didn't realize that, uh, that possibility was on the table."

"It hasn't been. Literally or figuratively speaking."

He blushed this time instead of turning white. She wondered if she ought to apologize again. No. She ought to explain.

"Billy..."

"Madam President?"

"I should tell you. You've been operating with outdated information. I..." Was there a better way to say it? Some turn of phrase that wouldn't make it all sound quite so farcical--or so real? There wasn't. She owed him the truth anyway. "I don't have cancer. My cancer is gone."

"What?"

"I believe Cottle's exact words were, _Your doctor was either a charlatan or an idiot._ "

He sank into a seat across from her desk. "How is that possible? I mean, that's wonderful news. But how...?"

"I think..." She shook her head. "This is perfectly absurd. I think I met my soul mate."

His eyes went wide and he stared at her. "Oh, no."

Dryly, she said, "Yes, that was my reaction, as well."

"Does Captain Adama know?"

"That I was dying?"

"No."

"He knows. But not about the cancer."

"What are you going to do? Are you going to tell him?"

She looked out the nearest window as if she even knew where Galactica lurked; as if her eyes could penetrate its hull if she did, and catch sight of Lee at this distance.

She took a deep breath. "I don't know."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news! I've finished the fic! The rest just needs a bit of a polish and it'll be ready to post soon.
> 
> This chapter was a challenge for a number of reasons (translation: every possible reason), not least of which that I can't seem to write Bill and Laura in the same scene without my inner Roslin/Adama fangirl wanting to wrap them in fuzzy blankets and smush them until they kiss and make up. I may have a problem.

"Put my son on the line immediately."

Laura could now definitively say that picking up the wireless to a snarling Bill Adama first thing in the morning was not one of her favourite things. Not that there had really been any doubt.

"Commander," she said neutrally.

"You heard me," he snapped. "Where the frak is Lee?"

Her heart turned over in her chest. "Lee isn't here."

"The hell he isn't. Tell him to get his ass back to Galactica and run his next briefing on time if he doesn't want to be court-martialed for delinquency and discharged from the Colonial fleet."

"Commander," she snapped, hearing her own voice as if from a great distance. "When I tell you that Lee isn't here, I'm not being disingenuous. Captain Adama is not on board Colonial One. I haven't seen or heard from him in several days. Now would you kindly tell me what this is about?"

"You haven't seen him today," he repeated.

"No."

"And he hasn't told you about any plans that involved leaving Galactica?"

"He has not."

Dead silence on the line left Laura imagining the worst. Steeling herself, she spoke. "Commander, enlighten me. What's happened to Lee?"

His anger seemed to have collapsed on itself by the time he answered. "I don't know. But we're going to find out."

 

* * *

 

For all its foreignness, Laura normally thought of Galactica's CIC as a model of military professionalism; a haven of calm efficiency in the hurricane that had lately possessed her life.

Today it was anything but. The room buzzed with tension. Harsh whispers floated from the corners, and the number of personnel on Galactica's main deck seemed to have doubled since the last time she was on board. She couldn't escape the creeping paranoia that told her every eye was on her, weighing her role in their CAG's disappearance against the rumors about their relationship.

Where Lee was concerned, she deserved whatever they thought of her, and worse, but that didn't make their gazes any easier to bear. And she had no Captain Apollo at her side to ward against their eyes or to translate military gibberish into sense.

Refusing to look around at the muttering or break stride, she made for Bill Adama where he stood on the far side of the central ops table. Arms crossed over his barrel chest, he met her eyes and she imagined she caught her own urgency reflected in them. But he only nodded to her before turning back to Colonel Tigh and two younger officers as she approached.

"Thank you, Lieutenant Gaeta," Adama said with approval. "We'll reconvene on the hour."

"Yes, sir."

The young man nodded and stepped back to his station. With a nod, Tigh peeled off on duties unknown, leaving Laura with only the Commander and one unfamiliar face: a young woman with cropped blonde hair and a stubborn line to her jaw.

"Madam President," Adama said, turning to face her. "This is Lieutenant Thrace, who will be leading the investigation."

So this was Kara Thrace. She looked every inch the spitfire Lee had made her out to be. And she would be heading up the search. Good.

Laura extended a hand with what genuine warmth she could muster. "A pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant Thrace. I've heard so much about you."

One golden eyebrow rose as Thrace seemed to stare right through her. "Likewise."

"Kara," the Commander chided.

Thrace glanced at him impishly as she gripped Laura's hand and added, only marginally more deferential, "Likewise, Madam President."

Bill took charge and absolved Laura of the need to respond. "You're here as an observer, Madam President, but you may also have information that would be useful to our search."

She dredged up a smile. "I sincerely doubt that, but I'm happy to share anything I know."

"Good," Lieutenant Thrace said, her scowl belying her words. "When was the last time you saw Lee?"

Laura took a breath. "At least a week ago. Eight, no, nine days ago." The day he'd come to Colonial One to tell her the gods wanted them to be together. The day she'd pushed him away.

"And the last time you spoke with him?"

"That would have been the day before yesterday. Thursday."

"But Lee said--" Thrace frowned.

Laura already knew she wasn't going to like the second half of that sentence, but she asked anyway. "Lee said?"

"You were calling him. All the time."

She wanted to argue, but-- "Yes. I have been. Yes."

She probably deserved the unimpressed stare Thrace leveled at her.

"--But the last time we spoke was two days ago." She would have called since, but she'd had trouble coming up with another plausible excuse. And now Lee was gone.

"Right." Thrace didn't say what she and the Commander must both have been thinking as they exchanged a glance--that bothering to talk to Laura had been a waste of their time. Which, for Kara Thrace, was probably more than diplomatic.

Not that being polite was getting them any closer to finding Lee.

"That's fine," Bill said with a shrug. "Work with what we have. There's still no ransom request?"

"No sir." Lieutenant Thrace frowned. "Not that we're expecting one."

"No." He met Laura's eyes and forced, if not a smile, at least something markedly less like a scowl. "We haven't yet found anyone who's seen Lee since the end of his 0630 briefing. But all of our ships are accounted for, so he's still on Galactica."

He looked at Kara, who planted her hands on her hips and nodded crisply. "All vipers and raptors present and in lockdown, sir. No one I've spoken to has seen Lee since 0700, but there's no reason to think he's been moved off Galactica. We'll find him, even if I have to break heads to do it." She didn't seem entirely upset at the prospect.

Laura said softly, "Let's hope that won't be necessary."

Thrace shrugged. "If you think of anything relevant, Madam President, you'll send word?" Without waiting for a response, she saluted the Commander almost lazily. "I'm off to join Search Team B. I'll let you know the minute we have anything, sir. Sirs."

 

* * *

 

Two hours passed without progress. No one had seen Lee since 0700. There was no doubt that he'd disappeared sometime between his first briefing of the day and his second, but that left Lieutenant Thrace and her search teams with nothing concrete to go on except a window of time and a possible starting location. But only _possible_ , because there had been more than enough time between briefings for him to have detoured to the mess, the gym, pilots' quarters--or all of the above, or anywhere else on the ship--in the intervening hour.

Lieutenant Thrace's three search parties had by now covered half of Galactica on foot, and they were still at square one.

After another rapid-fire report, Thrace strode from the CIC with a fond parting shot to the Commander about 'bringing in the cat'. Laura suspected it might be the better part of valour not to ask Adama about that one. (Lee would have known the story, and he'd have told her without being asked. Damn it.)

Instead, she leaned in to say, _sotto voce_ amid the tense hum of the CIC, "What happens if Lieutenant Thrace's teams finish their sweep of Galactica and don't find anything?"

"Then we keep searching, using Gaeta's list." He lowered his sheaf of notes to meet her eyes, then flicked his gaze toward the tactical station and the young man he'd been dismissing to his duties as she'd entered the CIC. "Lieutenant Gaeta's been compiling a priority list of ships for the search teams, based on our shuttle traffic and relative locations within the fleet. Galactica is first priority, but Team D is already out searching other ships."

"Good. That's good," Laura said, needing to put voice to something, even if it wasn't the right thing. Lee was missing and she might never have the chance to figure out what the right thing was, or to tell him if she did, but she was here now. Even if all she could do was ask meaningless questions and get in the way, it was better than sitting uninformed on Colonial One, clutching her metaphorical pearls and, what, praying?

It had to be better to be here and witness the search. Billy and the rest of her staff could hold things together in the fleet. This was where she needed to be.

"How are you holding up, Madam President?" Bill Adama's gravelly voice jolted her out of her thoughts.

"I'm not... I don't..." Damn it, Roslin, think before you speak. "I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I should be asking _you_ that question."

Bill nodded as if she had said something profound. (She was reasonably certain she hadn't.) "It's been less than six hours," he said. "We'll find him."

"Unless he's a toaster," Tigh rumbled, appearing as if out of nowhere. "Disappeared into thin air like that Shelley Godfrey woman."

Laura was glad not to be on the receiving end, for once, of the glower Bill leveled at the Colonel. It was no less intimidating when it was directed at someone else.

"That's _my son_ you're talking about," Bill snarled.

 _And the other half of my soul_ , Laura thought. _So, probably not a Cylon._

Tigh's face spoke volumes. "I'm sorry, Bill. I was out of line." He nodded contritely before moving on to another station.

"We'll find him," Bill repeated. He sounded certain, his faith in his crew and in his place in the universe unshakeable.

Laura nodded. "I want to believe that," she said, once she was confident that Colonel Tigh was out of earshot. She knew before she spoke that there would be too much in her voice. Too much that needed to be said, and that she could never say.

How could she possibly admit to Bill Adama, to the Commander of the Fleet and her own military right hand, that she was terrified that she was to blame for Lee's disappearance? That his son was missing because she had broken the one best thing she was supposed to receive in her life--because she was being punished for her ego and for her mistakes?

None of which was Lee's fault, no matter what the law or the priesthood said about soul mates. Lee should not have to bear the price of her arrogance.

 _If you're listening,_ she thought fiercely, _Zeus, Athena, Hades. Aphrodite,_ she added belatedly,  because this mess was Aphrodite's purview if it was anyone's, _if you're out there torturing me for your amusement--_

She schooled her face to stillness. _Then you must know none of this is Lee's fault. I'm the one who frakked up. I'm the one who didn't care what you wanted. I'm the one who pushed him away, for his own good, trying to--_ What had she been thinking, again? When Lee was right there within reach and she hadn't dared--? _I was trying to do what was best for him. I thought I knew what was right and wrong. I didn't have faith. I_ don't _have faith. But that's my flaw, that's my offense, and it has nothing to do with Lee. He hasn't sinned against you. Or against me. Not like I have._

_I hurt him and I didn't trust you, but he's blameless and doesn't deserve to be hurt to punish me. I'm the one who's done wrong._

_Please don't hurt him. Please, give me a chance to make this right._

It was as close as she'd come to praying in more years than she could count. It could not possibly be enough.

 

* * *

 

"Let's break for lunch," Bill said an interminable period of time later, and she nodded.

 

* * *

 

They went to the Commander's quarters. Lunch was delivered to them by a crewman who seemed uncertain of his welcome, leaving Laura with the suspicion that Adama didn't often pause for quiet meals in his quarters. Which could only mean they were there out of concern for her sensibilities.

She found herself grateful for the reprieve, but equally uncomfortable with the implication that Bill Adama not only knew more than he was saying about her relationship with Lee, not only saw through her resolute facade, but cared enough to be considerate of her needs in the midst of a crisis that surely affected him as deeply as it did her.

How could he sit there and stare calmly across a table at her while his son was--missing? Kidnapped? A Cylon spy? Lying dead behind a bulkhead somewhere?

Yes, that, there--that was the sheer, crippling terror she was trying to hold off at arm's length until she could pretend it away.

"We will get him back," Bill said, once they were ensconced on either side of his desk and she was two bites into a meal that made even Colonial One's rations seem luxurious by comparison. She made a mental note: They would have to do something about the fleet's food stores, and sooner rather than later.

Laura made a vague and uncertain noise in the back of her throat, and was immediately ashamed of it.

Bill simply looked at her, impassive. "We'll find him. Don't doubt it."

"I suppose I don't have your faith."

Bill chuckled. "It's not faith, Madam President. It's determination. We will find him. And when we do..."

When they found him. When he was there in front of her and she could make the same mistakes and defy the gods and hurt him, all over again.

Still better than the alternative, where they never found him. Or didn't find him in time.

She pushed the possibilities aside and tried not to think about anything except the extraordinarily unappetizing food in front of her.

"You've heard the rumors," Bill said now, mercifully interrupting her train of thought again.

"Rumors?"

"About yourself and Lee."

"Ah, yes. The rumors." She raised one eyebrow and waited to see where he was headed. She could do this. Normal conversation. This was a thing that was happening.

He paused, chopsticks halfway to his mouth, to look at her.

She had to smile at his... was that concern? "I'm fine, Commander. Baseless rumors blow over. I've been in politics a long time, you know."

"I'm sure they do," he said thoughtfully.

"Hardly our biggest concern at the moment, in any case."

"That's true."

Oh, this was going to be good. She resisted the urge to hold her breath while she waited for the other military boot to drop.

He set his chopsticks down. "Madam President. You know the political landscape better than I do." He nodded respectfully. "But I've always believed that if they're going to string you up for a sin, you might as well enjoy it first."

She lowered her coffee before she could choke on it.

Could he possibly--? Was William Adama really saying--? He couldn't be.

"Especially," he added, with a casualness that had to be feigned, "if there are more pieces in play than meet the eye."

 

* * *

 

"We know you're awake, Captain Adama. There's no use pretending."

Lee didn't move, didn't open his eyes. Tried to keep his breathing shallow and even.

Too late. Something impacted the side of his face with a wet, jarring crack. He'd been hit often enough in his life to recognize it as the back of a hand. The sound of rapidly retreating footsteps gave him the direction of his assailant, for what little good it did while he was tied upright in... a mess chair? Lee tested the bonds at his wrists and ankles, but there was almost no give.

He opened his eyes.

"There he is. Good boy."

"Frak you." The room was dark, but Lee spat in the direction of the man's disembodied voice.

A woman laughed unpleasantly. "Not sure President Roslin would approve."

His eyes narrowing, Lee squinted into the farthest corner of the room, where he imagined he'd seen movement. Was that what this was all about? The President?

Silence for a moment, and then the man spoke again from the opposite corner. "Tell us about your relationship with so-called President Roslin, Captain."

...And that was affirmative. They were after Laura. Through him.

"My relationship with President Roslin," he told the dark room, "is a matter of public record. I serve as her advisor on military protocols."

"Is that all you do?" the woman drawled.

"Yes."

"Why should we believe you?"

Lee was already regretting having opened his mouth but he hated being at a disadvantage, he hated having his hands immobilized, and he hated being questioned by fools who didn't know enough to get off Galactica after they knocked him out and captured him. (He was nearly sure they were still on Galactica; the air smelled like an old battlestar's tired recirculation system and the vents had the same quiet purr as the one next to his rack. And if they _were_ still on board, then they were going to be found by a search sooner rather than later, no matter how well they were hidden. So, again: _fools_.)

Most of all, he hated the thought that he might be used against Laura Roslin, _his_ Laura, just when it felt like he was approaching some kind of better footing with her. Just when he might have had a chance. And these idiots were standing in his way.

Jerking his wrists hard enough to almost upend the chair, Lee snapped, "Why are you asking me anything if you're not going to listen to my answers?"

"If that's how it's going to be..." the man said.

"Just do it," his female counterpart spat. "We don't have much time."

There was the sound of something liquid being shaken. "He might yet talk without--"

"No more games," the woman said. "Let's get on with this, doctor. We knew he wouldn't tell us anything useful without the drugs."

"And the risks? We don't want to accidentally kill Adama's son before we even get any information--"

"What about the risks if they find us? You know as well as I do that we need to move fast and get out of here."

Lee put a satisfied mental checkmark next to 'probably still on Galactica'. Risky truth drugs, on the other hand, sounded less than promising.

"Fine, fine." The man shuffled closer, and Lee could just make out a shadowed face, greying stubble hovering above a worn button-down as the man frowned at him. "I'd tell you to sit still, but it's not going to make a whole lot of difference either way."

Lee pulled against his bonds again, reflexively, but his captors had known what they were doing with the knots. He saw the needle go into his arm and felt a slight burning chill. Then, nothing.

Withdrawing the needle, the man sighed. "Hang tight, Captain. In a few minutes, you'll be telling us everything you know about the President. And everything else in your head, too."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've spent a year playing with this story and now it's done. Alllll the feels.
> 
> A short epilogue will go up right after this, but don't expect a full 7th chapter or you'll be disappointed.
> 
> Big hugs and thanks to my friend and beta reader, Dana, who put up with me running all my fic musings past him for months, nagged me approximately 800,000 times to JUST LET THEM KISS ALREADY, and then wrote all of Cottle's best lines in this chapter when my Doc Cottle voice decided to check out. And who has preemptively agreed to beta the next mess, too! Thanks, hun. This fic would exist without you, but it would be a lesser creation, and I'm really grateful to have had your input.

They found him in a little-used maintenance corridor on Galactica that night--shivering, bruised and barely breathing, MIA for nearly 20 hours, but mercifully, gloriously, alive.

Laura had been asleep for what felt like five minutes, but was probably nearer five hours, when the sudden pounding at the door--hatch?--to her guest quarters jerked her back to wakefulness. Heart pounding, she blinked into the foreign darkness for a few seconds before--oh. She was on Galactica. Adama had assigned guest quarters for her so she could stay the night instead of shuttling back to Colonial One in the midst of the search. Lee was still missing--

Oh, gods. Someone was pounding on her door and it had to be about Lee.

Expecting the worst, she tripped out of bed, stumbled most of the way to the hatch trying not to fall over the legs of her too-long borrowed sleepwear (for frak's sake, had these pyjama pants been designed for a giant?), and slammed painfully into the wheel latch on the door before she could fumble it open. Wincing into the sudden bright light of the corridor, Laura vaguely recognized the two marines from prior trips to Galactica.

"Sorry for disturbing you, Madam President," the taller of the two dark-haired women said. "The Commander sent us to escort you to sickbay. Captain Adama's been found."

Sickbay. "Is he--?" She couldn't bring herself to say the words.

"Alive, sir. He's in a coma, but alive."

"Thank the gods." And Bill Adama. And Kara Thrace. And everyone else who had assisted in the search. "I'll need a moment. Will you still be here if I--"

The marine nodded firmly, sympathy in her eyes. "We'll wait, Madam President."

 

* * *

 

"Why isn't he awake yet?" Lieutenant Thrace demanded of someone unseen as Laura came within earshot of Galactica's sickbay. Torn between urgency and curiosity, Laura held up a hand to halt her marine escort just out of sight in the corridor.

"He'll come out of sedation when his body's damned well ready to," she heard Cottle all but growl. So Laura wasn't the only one who was a strain on Cottle's finite patience; the discovery was oddly reassuring. "You hovering around my sickbay like a flock of upset chickens isn't helping him recover any sooner."

"I thought his recovery was your job," Thrace muttered over the sound of Bill Adama clearing his throat.

The doctor ignored Adama in favor of snapping at Thrace. "And I suppose you know what they injected him with? Short of that, I've got him on intravenous fluids and I'm going to wait for his body to filter out whatever they gave him on its own."

"But you know it's a truth serum," Adama said, and it wasn't quite a question.

"I know nothing of the kind. As I told the Lieutenant earlier, the traces in his system look something like an experimental truth serum Fleet Medical was working on a decade ago, but damned if my memory is good enough to tell you more than that. Bring me the drug and I can work on synthesizing an antidote, but I can't do it based on ancient history and speculation."

And Laura wasn't likely to learn more by eavesdropping from the hall.

Adama and Thrace looked up neutrally as she entered, her two marines peeling off to either side of the sickbay doors. Cottle's glare moved from Thrace to Laura before settling on the Lieutenant again. "Did you send sickbay invitations to the entire frakking fleet?"

Laura smiled cooly. "I thought you could use another hovering chicken."

"In that case, you heard wrong."

"She's his soul mate," Adama said quietly.

The doctor's eyes widened. "Because what we need around here is even more drama."

"I'll do my best to be as little drama today as possible," Laura said. "Now, where is Captain Adama?"

"Ishay will take you." He waved the medic over and then frowned once more at Thrace. "He'll wake up when he's good and ready to wake up, so don't come crying to me with redundant questions."

"Understood, doctor," Bill said, waving Laura ahead of him.

Cottle only raised his brows as they passed and muttered, "Soul mates. Good frakking grief."

 

* * *

 

Lee looked somewhere between alive and dead, Laura thought, with the emphasis on dead. A chorus of medical sensors claimed that he was breathing, his heart was beating, he had brain activity; but every time Laura pulled her gaze from the screens to risk a glance at Lee's face (so waxy and pale, oh gods), she worried that this time his vitals really had stopped and that if she reached for him, her hand would meet only a cold corpse.

Thrace and Adama had left sickbay over an hour ago, the former to continue her search for Lee's assailants and the latter to attend to whatever duties required his presence in the CIC. Nothing about Lee's condition had changed since, but Laura found herself unable to either look away or bridge the distance between her hands and Lee's frame.

She needed to touch him to know that he was alive, to know that he was real.

She couldn't bear to touch him in case he crumbled to dust in her grasp.

"I have been so unfair to you, Lee," she muttered softly. "I only wanted to protect you. You never asked for this."

Or maybe he had. How the frak would she know? She shook her head at her own presumption. If _she_ hadn't wanted a soul mate, then no one else in their right mind could want one, either?

But maybe Lee had wanted one. If the gods had asked before they stuck him with her (Laura Roslin: perpetually not-quite-single, perpetually pushing everyone away, perpetually using the existence of her soul mate as a crutch and a dividend she'd never intended to cash in), maybe Lee would have chosen to have a soul mate; maybe he would even have chosen her. It's not as if he was known for making wise decisions. The stubborn, stupid, beautiful fool.

"Lee," she sighed, and his name on her lips felt like a stolen caress to which she wasn't entitled."I've been selfish, and scared, and I have been so cruel to you. But I need you to wake up. The fleet needs you, and your father needs you, and Kara Thrace might skin me alive if you don't wake up again. But mostly," and she almost choked on the words, but if she couldn't say them while he was out cold, how the hell was she ever going to say anything to his face? "Mostly me. I need you, Lee. Please. Come back."

If someone had told her five weeks ago, on the night she'd met Captain Lee Adama, that she would be here now, pleading at his bedside--

If you had told her in the midst of that infernal mothball reception that the angry young viper jock who could barely be bothered to give her the time of day was her soul mate, after all the long years of _not searching_ _for him_ \--

For frak's sake. Of course she hadn't seen this coming.

How could she have possibly known, with the death sentence of her diagnosis still ringing in her ears, that the arrogant kid snubbing her handshake at Galactica's retirement ceremony would, hours later, be the shoulder she would lean on as everything, literally everything, fell apart?

So, yes, her opinion of him had changed quickly, and it had changed sometime between his saving Colonial Heavy 798 from an incoming Cylon missile and the moment when he'd sat down across from her, in passenger first class seating that was destined to become her presidential office, and looked at her with empathy and concern.

Such a small thing, really. A gesture of compassion, of humanity, in a moment when she had needed a friendly face more than she needed air.

A life could be built on small things. And a soul bond, by any reckoning, was not a small thing.

No, stop. That day, on Colonial One. Had he already known?

With all the power of hindsight... she began to suspect that he had. Lee had known she was his soul mate, and (oh gods) she had curled up in her chair and all but sobbed on him about Richard.

And then he had brushed past her with barely a cool word to save Colonial One from the Cylons again. Tangled up in knots as she had been (the destruction of human civilization looming over their heads, her mortality and Richard's death in the forefront of her mind) she had barely noticed the sharp twinge in her chest as Lee rushed from the cockpit--

But, no. It hadn't been her _chest_. It had been her _left breast_. Her left breast, where the cancer had been. The magically disappearing cancer that had vanished because her soul mate had touched her, skin to skin; had brushed her hand with his as he rushed belowdecks to save her ass _again_.

And now he was in a coma--dying, maybe--and she could do nothing to save him.

Except, perhaps, hold his hand. If she could find the nerve.

 

* * *

 

She woke abruptly to discover Lieutenant Thrace sitting on the other side of Lee's hospital bed, frowning down at her.

"Do you believe in the gods, Madam President?" Thrace asked.

Laura blinked sleep from her eyes as she straightened in her chair and hoped her face wasn't too creased from Lee's sheets. "I don't know," she said eventually. "I suppose I do."

Thrace turned to look at Lee, then reached out to lay her hand on his wrist a scant few inches from the IV line. "It's sacred, you know. What the two of you have."

Struggling to catch up to... whatever this conversation might be, Laura nodded. "He's very dear to me."

" _Dear_? Sure. But I mean--" Thrace shook her head. "There's a reason the law classes soul bonds the way it does."

"I always thought it was insane," Laura admitted softly. "Giving anyone that much legal control over another person, based on a whim of the gods. No matter how well you fit together, no matter how much you love. What if they abuse it?"

"That doesn't happen."

Certainty like that was for the young, Laura thought wryly, raising an eyebrow. "Ever?"

"Never."

"Hmm." She would hold on mutely to her skepticism, then. After all, Kara Thrace hadn't cornered her at Lee's bedside to discuss hypotheticals.

And of course _Lee_ wouldn't let her down.

...Gods, this soul mate stuff was dangerous.

(Lee might let her down. As she had so thoroughly let him down.)

"We caught them," Thrace said suddenly, icy resolution in her tone. "The asshole dissidents who took Lee. They don't know anything about the drug except how to administer it, and that it's dangerous. The doc's working with what we got from them."

"Thank you--"

But Thrace spoke at the same time. "If he doesn't wake up soon--"

"He'll wake up." And certainty was for the _young_. But he would wake up. He had to. "Thank you for helping me find him."

Thrace shot her a deeply unimpressed look. "Are you frakking with me? Of course I found him. He's been mine a lot longer than he's been yours, Madam President."

There was a tense beat of silence before Thrace recoiled into her chair, knuckling at her eyes. "Frak. Of course he wasn't. Frak me."

"It's all right," Laura said. "We both care about Lee."

"With all due respect--"

"Lieutenant Thrace. Let's not bother with false pleasantries."

"Then with _no_ due respect, you need to get your head out of your ass." Thrace spat. "And frak you for making me say this. I don't do feelings. I wind people up and then I hit them."

"I'd prefer if you didn't hit me, but you're welcome to call me an idiot if it makes you feel better."

Thrace eyed her speculatively and Laura thought it might be the first halfway friendly expression she'd seen the younger woman direct at her.

Laura took a deep breath, then added. "I certainly am. Calling myself an idiot."

"Are you?" Thrace shot back. "Because I'm not sure it's enough."

"Enough for what?"

"For how chewed up he was after you pushed him away."

She felt the words like a punch to the gut. "I don't know if there's anything I can say to make that right."

"Not to me, there sure as frak isn't. Madam President."

She felt a smile creep across her face. "Laura. You should call me Laura."

The answering grin was all sunshine and violence. "Kara. And you'd better do right by him."

"Recent history suggests that I have no idea how. But I'll do my best."

 

* * *

 

Lee woke groggy and congested, wondering what the hell he'd been drinking last night. Whatever it was, the hangover kicked like a mule. Make that a herd of mules. ( _Had_ any mules survived the exodus from the Colonies? He didn't know.) His head hurt, his eyes felt like they'd been filled with sawdust, and he wasn't sure what the acrid taste in the back of his throat was. For that matter, why did he smell... was that antiseptic and freesia?

He opened his eyes just a crack. Sure enough, there was an IV line in his right arm, directly opposite the spot where the needle had gone into his left, and--

The needle. And the questions. They'd asked about military operations, about his father, details of the fleet's strengths and weaknesses; but mostly they had asked about the President.

He'd told them everything: That she was his soul mate, how desperately he wanted her. He hadn't been able to stop talking until they'd dosed him with a second shot, and now--

He was, apparently, in Galactica's sickbay. Huh.

Someone was holding his hand.

 _Laura_ was holding his hand. He smiled.

"Oh. I'm hallucinating."

"I'm real," she said, reaching for a cup with her free hand and holding it for him to sip.

The water was almost enough to convince him--cool and soothing to his raw throat in a way that only reality should be--but that's just what a hallucination _would_ say. "The real Laura Roslin wouldn't be holding my hand."

"Shows what you know, Captain Apollo." She smiled, setting the cup aside.

"I'm pretty sure I'm still tied to a chair in a storage locker," he told his hallucination firmly.

"You aren't." Her fingers tightened on his and then she was rising from her seat, still clutching his hand. "Thank the gods, you aren't."

She leaned in, resting her elbow beside his head, and his breath caught in his throat when their eyes met.

"Laura," he said, and then her lips were on his.

The kiss was almost impossibly chaste at first. But he had been craving this--craving her--for so long that the gentlest brush of lips seemed to set off sparks beneath his skin. Her fingers slid up his arm, stroking a line up his left bicep that drove heat straight to his groin. Shuddering as her hand moved along his collarbone, he licked across her lower lip until she whimpered. Her hand settled possessively on the back of his neck and he took it as an invitation to deepen the kiss, pulling her in against his body.

He was rewarded with a mesmerizing groan that she would probably be embarrassed to own to later, and he broke away for a moment to grin up at her in delight and amazement.

He had made Laura Roslin make that sound. He had done that.

Kidnapping and drug-induced babbling of state secrets aside, this might actually be the best day ever.

"Now I know I'm imagining all of this," he said, still smiling up at her. He didn't think he could possibly stop unless someone made him. Then, noticing the dull ache in his arm, he added, "And I think I've pulled out my IV."

She laughed and it was the most wonderful thing in the universe, so he pulled her close again, breathing her in.

Freesia, and something more, something that was distinctly her.

His soul mate. _His_.

"Lee," she said softly. He let her go and she immediately sat back in her chair, staring at him for a few warm, breathless seconds.

"You're alive," she said, still gazing at him with things he didn't know how to name shining in her eyes. "I didn't know if I'd ever get the chance to--and now you're alive. And awake."

He smiled. "And you're here."

"I'm here. And still terrible at this."

"We're in the same room, at the same time. I'm not complaining."

Something in her face shuttered, just a little, and he regretted the words immediately.

"No, don't. I'm sorry." He tried to sit up, wincing as the movement reminded him, first, that everything ached, and second, that he was wearing little more than an open-backed hospital gown.

Still, Laura Roslin had kissed him, and that more than made up for a bit of pain and embarrassment.

He reached out and took her hand carefully. "We're going to be all right, aren't we?"

She nodded cautiously, her eyes full of soft and vicious things yet unsaid. "I think we might manage it, somehow."

 

* * *

 

"I met Kara," she told him later, after the doc had checked him over and reluctantly pronounced him back among the living, if not quite ready to leave sickbay. "I like her."

Lee grinned around a mouthful of whatever the frak Galactica's mess was turning out today. Some kind of noodle. It wasn't terrible. In relative terms, at least.

She smiled fondly back at him. If he lived to be a hundred, two hundred even, he would never grow tired of that smile.

"Not sure she likes me," she added.

Dryly, he said, "So you've met Kara, then."

"I have indeed. Your family are a bit... intense."

 _Family_ used to be his mother and father and Zak (in a previous life, before the Cylons destroyed everything and his soul mate pulled him and his viper out of a mess of spaceborne debris) but he knew what she meant. "Because _you're_ such a shrinking violet."

"Touché." Her smiled went lopsided and she drawled, "While you were out, Kara gave me a very menacing blend of encouragement and a shovel talk. And this is after your father all but told me to just frak you already."

He choked on a noodle. "My father said _what_?"

She smirked at his reaction and hummed thoughtfully. "I may have paraphrased a little."

"I sure hope so."

"Not by much. He's been treating me like we're already sworn to each other."

And, frak, Lee knew exactly how well that must have gone over with her. "Oh, gods. And you're still here?"

Her smile turned wry. "You deserve so much better than the way I've treated you."

"Stop it." He set aside his meal to take her hand. "I don't deserve better. I deserve you."

"For your sins?"

He was pretty sure his grin was too big, too happy, and he didn't care. "Probably."

"Lee." She squeezed his hand and her voice fell. "I am sorry, and I should be sorry. I hurt you. I was so unprepared for this, and--"

"It's all right."

"It's not."

"As long as you don't plan to run away the minute I'm released from sickbay--"

"I don't. But." She paused for a minute as if to gird herself. "There's something I need to tell you."

Now that wasn't ominous at all. He met her eyes and tried to pretend he was ready for whatever anvil she was going to drop.

"Lee, I had cancer."

 _What?_ "Is that why you disappeared for all those years?"

"No. That was--that part was self-inflicted. I was scared. Of you. Of this. So I took myself out of the equation. But I had metastasized cancer five weeks ago, and I was dying. I found out the morning of the attack."

"Frak," Lee said, and then couldn't think beyond, " _Had?_ "

"Yes. Had." She smiled. "By the time I could get an appointment to see Cottle, the cancer was gone. Not only that, I know when it disappeared because I felt it go. It was you."

" _What?_ "

"The first time you touched me. On Colonial One, when the Cylons were attacking us and you left the cockpit to--"

"You mean when I charged insubordinately out of the cockpit because I was scared shitless my idea wouldn't work and that we were all about to be toaster target practice?" He grimaced.

"Yes. When I'd given you a bad directive and you decided to save our lives despite my stubbornness."

Forget emergency command decisions, Lee had bigger things to wrap his mind around. He knew just how incredulous he sounded when he said, "You're saying you had cancer. Metastasized cancer. And it disappeared like magic, like the old soul mate myths, when I touched you?"

"Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying." She seemed serene and sure, but what she was saying was _crazy_.

"I'm guessing you've had more time to absorb this than I have."

"A little more, yes. Though I think you had the jump on me in figuring out that we were soul mates."

"When did you...?" He trailed off, remembering how well things had gone the last time he'd asked.

This time, though, she answered. "I didn't suspect anything until that frakking meeting with you and your Mintoids."

He blinked. "The meeting you left in the middle of for no apparent reason?"

"Yes. That one."

"That was about _me?_ "

"It was entirely about you."

"Huh." He shook his head. It didn't help. "I knew from the second I saw you on Colonial One. After you had me bailed out of that viper."

She smiled smugly. "I thought in retrospect that you might have."

She didn't ask why he hadn't talked to her sooner. He supposed that part went without saying.

"Cancer. Gods. You're sure it's gone?"

She nodded. "Doc Cottle is."

"I'm glad we met now, instead of too soon, or too late, for me to help."

"Gods, Lee," she said. "You're too good."

"I'm really not."

That skeptical eyebrow only made him want to kiss her again.

"And if we're fighting over who's too good for whom," he told her, "you are losing that argument. _Madam President_."

She shot him a look that, if he had to guess, he would place somewhere between appalled, startled, and impressed. Then she leaned in and kissed him, a light touch of lips that promised more.

"I think," she said softly, resting her forehead against his, "I can humor you there."

"Good call."

She laughed, and he grinned against her cheek, and if he was clutching her too tight he thought it was no more fiercely than she was holding on to him.

"Now," he goaded, giddy and incredulous, "can we come back to the part where you were _scared of me?_ "


	7. Epilogue

  

> PRESIDENTIAL SOUL MATE REVELATION SHOCKS FLEET
> 
> _D'Anna Biers, Fleet News Service Senior Correspondent_
> 
> The recent disappearance of Captain Leland 'Lee' Adama has been anything but a well-kept secret in the fleet. The active manhunt for Galactica's missing CAG, better known as Commander Adama's son and by his callsign, 'Apollo,' sparked outrage against the military last week even as it created sympathy and concern for the pilot's safe return.
> 
> Tempers have cooled dramatically since Apollo's recovery, but curiosity has been ignited about the man behind the viper thanks to the recent revelation that Lee Adama is one half of our fleet's first celebrity soul mate match.
> 
> According to an inside source in Galactica's CIC, Captain Adama was found collapsed in a corridor on Galactica five days ago, suffering from 'extreme flu-like symptoms,' and was rushed to sickbay. Later that same night, President Roslin was spotted clutching Commander Adama's arm for support as she made her way from the flight deck toward--you guessed it--Galactica's sickbay. The President has since vanished entirely from the public eye, declining to comment on this week's debates over emergency rationing and water distribution efforts.
> 
> As one Galactica crewman overheard on Wednesday while being treated in sickbay for a work-related injury, the President has been glued to Captain Adama's sickbed for days. "She won't leave, not even for meals," the officer said. "She's been sleeping in a chair next to his cot. I heard the medics talking, and the words 'soul mate' were definitely being tossed around. I don't know about that, but she sure is sitting there and refusing to leave him for anything."
> 
> Rumors have been flying about inappropriate closeness between the President and Captain Adama since day one, but this revelation casts their relationship in a new light. Can it be true? Has President Roslin, aged 47, found her soul match in her 26-year-old 'military advisor'? And if so, what does that mean for the future of the fleet? (Stay tuned for a longer discussion of soul mate myths, pop culture trends, the significance of soul mate age gaps, and what the science _really_ says in next week's issue.)
> 
> We may mutter it quietly, but the otherwise curmudgeonly reporters of the _Fleet News Service_ are closet romantics at heart. We wish the President and Captain Adama every joy in each other and in their new soul bond.
> 
> Swift recovery, Lee!

 

Laura sighed and shoved the paper flimsy off the side of the bed. "Well, it could have been worse."

"It could have mentioned that thing you do with your fingers."

She raised an eyebrow and fought back the smirk that threatened to slip past her admittedly floundering defenses. "Which thing might that be?"

"On my--"

Lee's words choked off abruptly as she licked her way up his throat to nip at an earlobe. "Well, since the only way they'd know about _that_ is if you'd been talking to a reporter in the last four minutes..."

He laughed and pulled her flush against him. It was an impossible joy, that she could have a naked Lee Adama in her bed and the world hadn't crashed down on them. Yet.

"Am I the only person alive who knows that you're this filthily creative in bed?" he mumbled into the side of her neck.

"Oh, gods." His sense of humor was going to be the death of her. If the sex didn't do her in first.

All mock-seriousness, he intoned, "It's an honour, Madam President."

" _Lee_."

He grinned wickedly at her dismay and leaned in to steal a kiss, which turned into another (and rather lengthier) kiss, and then his hand was somehow magically between their bodies and rubbing circles against her clit again. She grabbed at his absurdly muscled shoulders and all but purred.

He pulled away and looked her in the eyes before he slid down her body to set his mouth where his fingers had been.

"What are you--I only just-- _Lee_..."

"I'd hoped that part might be obvious." He dragged his tongue up her slit and then sucked the nub of her clit with a wet hum before he broke away. "Maybe I'm doing something wrong."

"Never," she said softly, carding her fingers through his hair as he licked her clit again. The Cylons were still out there, tensions in the fleet were a powder keg, and she would do her damnedest as President for as long as the people needed her. But for the moment, none of that mattered. "Never. Don't stop."


End file.
